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Members of Arcade Fire and Preservation Hall Jazz Band Team Up For Inaugural "Krewe du Kanaval"

Win Butler and Régine Chassagne of Arcade Fire have joined with New Orleans’ own Preservation Hall Jazz Band to create a free parade and afternoon festival in The Big Easy, dubbed the Krewe du Kanaval.

Taking place on Tuesday Feb. 6, the event will begin with a procession through the city’s French Quarter, then stop at Armstrong Park before ending with a ticketed “Kanaval Ball” at One Eyed Jacks on Toulouse Street.

In addition to the indie singers and Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the event will feature DJ Nickodemus, Pierre Kwenders, DJ Cosmo Gonik, Paul Beaubrun and special guests from Haiti.

On the festival’s website, the organizers define the term “Kanaval” as the festive time leading up to Lent or Mardi Gras, and state its mission as a “celebration of Haiti and the diaspora of cultures that have enriched New Orleans’ identity and arts for hundreds of years.”

Money raised during the event will benefit the historic Preservation Hall Foundation and the KANPE foundation. Recently, Butler, Chassagne and Preservation Hall Jazz Band performed together at a similar KANPE benefit at New York’s Soho Grand Hotel.

These hipster canucks have no shame in their appropriation of NOLA culture. Gotta love how they are trying to incorporate Haitian terminology into it too. Mardi Gras stems back to ancient Greek pagan traditions. Leave that shit to Zulu and get a real haircut.